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Attract and retain the patients you aspire to serve by offering the care network, access, and experience they need. See a list of our capabilities below or visit the Optum website for more information about our comprehensive approach to health care operations.

Improve quality and outcomes and lower costs by eliminating unwarranted deviation from the best standard of care. See a list of our capabilities below or visit the Optum website for more information about our comprehensive approach to data and analytics.

Sustain the financial stability to serve your community by making sure you’re paid efficiently for services rendered. See a list of our capabilities below or visit the Optum website for more information about our comprehensive approach to revenue cycle management.

What's the current state of provider-supplier risk-sharing arrangements? And what do Advisory Board experts anticipate from these deals—often called outcomes-based contracts (OBCs)—in the near-term future? These are member questions we have tried to answer through webconferences, blog posts, insights articles, and conversations with many of you and your colleagues.

In January, just months after rolling back several mandatory bundled payment programs, CMS announced a new voluntary bundled payment initiative. The design of the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Advanced (BPCI Advanced) program has not only spurred renewed interest in episodic cost management, but has also changed the way organizations are viewing bundled payment "conveners" in light of the immediate transition to downside risk and complex implications related to MACRA.

Improving patient experience is an intrinsically valuable goal—and one providers have pursued because of its direct impact on reimbursement. But the lesser-known truth is that patient experience impacts health system margins beyond an individual facility's HCAHPS score. As more consumers rely on word-of-mouth referrals, their experience determines not just whether an individual returns for care, but whether he or she recommends that provider to friends and family.

The health care industry is no stranger to mergers and acquisitions, but in a span of roughly two weeks last month, we saw three huge acquisition announcements that were anything but typical. CVS plans to buy Aetna for $69 billion in cash and stock; UnitedHealth Group's Optum unit will acquire DaVita Medical Group for $4.9 billion in cash; and Humana, along with two private equity firms, has agreed to buy Kindred Healthcare for $4.1 billion (Humana will pay $810 million for a 40% stake in Kindred's home health care business).

It's no secret that care is moving from inpatient to outpatient care settings at a rapid pace. The recently released Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) Final Rule illustrates 'CMS's intention to gradually shift more procedures to outpatient sites. The rule calls for a 1.4% year-over-year increase in hospital outpatient service payments—'a boost of about $5.8B—but that's hardly the big news.

Cybersecurity has made its way to the top of health leaders' priority lists—and with good reason: A recent report notes that 89% of health care organizations (HCOs) experienced a data breach over the past two years. We've previously written about how HCOs can prevent data breaches, but the inevitability of these events means providers should also be planning for the worst case scenario.

Following a breach, it's important to recover data and shore up security, but these efforts will be for naught if they aren't communicated properly. In cases where patient data is leaked, "speed is the name of the game," according to Brian Ellis of Padilla, a PR agency. Organizations have to respond quickly and honestly to avoid lasting damage to their brand.

To learn more effective breach communications strategies, we interviewed cybersecurity crisis management experts at three firms: Lovell Communications, a health care public relations and crisis communication firm; Padilla, a PR agency; and, Revive Health, a marketing agency. Here's what they had to say.

California's new drug price transparency law (SB 17) has, understandably, sent shock waves across the pharmaceutical industry—after all, the measure has been called "the nation's most sweeping effort" to make prescription drug pricing more transparent.

In a nutshell, the law requires drug manufacturers to provide notice to payers and consumers 60 days in advance of a planned price hike of 16% or more. Furthermore, it requires manufacturers to provide justification for the hike.

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